


Though Soft You Tread Above Me

by JezebelGoldstone



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Cas thinks Dean is worth quite a lot, Dean feels worthless, Devotion, Drama, Earth, Fluff, Heaven, Love Declarations, M/M, More angst, Romance, Self-Esteem Issues, True Love, and tries to convince him of that, sad Irish songs, worthless!Dean, yet more angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-27 12:33:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2693156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JezebelGoldstone/pseuds/JezebelGoldstone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Cas finds himself cast out of Heaven and trapped on Earth, all he wants is to find Dean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Though Soft You Tread Above Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MiyakoToudaiji](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiyakoToudaiji/gifts), [StarryEyed41](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarryEyed41/gifts).



> Thanks eternal to Miyako and StarryEyed for the fabulous beta'ing! :)

 

* * *

  
  
 _But he did not reach for a pillow to smother Ender. He did not have a weapon._  
 _He whispered, "Ender, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know how it feels, I'm sorry, I'm your brother, I love you."_  
-Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card

 

 _When you come back and all the flowers are dying_  
 _If I am dead, as dead I well may be,_  
 _Then you'll go out and find where I am lying_  
 _And kneel and say an Ave there for me_  
  
 _And I will hear, though soft you tread above me,_  
 _And all my grave shall warmer, sweeter be,_  
 _For you will bend and tell me that you love me_  
 _I'll sleep in peace until you come to me_  
-O Danny Boy, Irish trad. ([listen here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHSzDlZVSdM))

* * *

 

 

Castiel doesn't understand what's happening when his brothers reach for him. So many of them at once--- Raphael, Michael, Zachariah, Gabriel, Anna, others, more, seemingly every brother or sister he's ever loved or hurt or even spoken to--- angels and archangels and pretend trickster-gods all stretching out and laying hands on him the way some Christians do. Did? He's been away from Earth so long. Why do they reach for him?

For one moment he thinks they reach to embrace, and for one moment they do; their hands are warm and soft and he thinks that they might love him. A moment more and he realizes what they're doing, and he reaches for memories of green eyes to calm himself even though he still doesn't understand: they seize him, they rip at him, they change him, he tries to hold on to at least his memories while they take what has always been his and give him back what he had just the once, and then---

They reach, all of them, all the ones he fought for and against and because of and the only beings in the universe who _know_ , who know exactly what he is, they reach for him--- and they cast him out.

Castiel falls for a long time. When he stops falling he wakes, and he is on Earth, and he is--- human. Utterly, utterly human.

He can never get out of this one, can never undo it; not when every denizen of Heaven on high has unanimously done this to him. He had thought--- He knew he had angered many of them, made enemies of some, but he'd thought that a few of them, at least, were on his side. Cared about him, even a little bit. And now they have thrown him away from them, and thrown him out of his home, and put him in a form that means he cannot return home until years have passed on Earth and he dies the human way--- And even if he dies, perhaps he cannot go to Heaven even then.

He stands and looks about. His habit when on Earth is to go immediately to Dean and Sam, but human as he is he cannot simply will himself to their side. Cannot even tell which way to go to find them. He's standing on a long strip of abandoned, unmarked road, deep woods green with summer heat on either side, the afternoon sunlight golden all around. It would be beautiful, were it something he wished for himself. He goes right.

While he walks he tries to understand. He cannot. His brothers are the only beings in the universe who know fully what he is, but at least Dean and Sam are still his. They still care about him, and he will always care about them; though he’s worried that now he’s human again, they may not want him around. Not because they don’t care about him, but because they do: hunting is a dangerous thing. Were he not so intent on finding Dean he might smile at the memory of how protective Dean can be.

His mind is so bent on his current predicament, and on all the myriad reasons his brothers may have done this to him (none of them makes sense because he'd thought, he'd really thought that they actually---) he hardly notices when he begins passing signs of habitation: roads branching off, low houses, old garages and pole-barns with clapboard sides and tin roofs.

When the sun starts beating down on him full-force and he realizes he's no longer shaded by the trees, he looks up to find himself on the edge of a small town. It's quiet, not a soul in sight, and he cannot see any sign that might indicate where he is. He's been to present-day America enough to know he's probably somewhere in the Midwest, or maybe the Southwest; aside from that, it seems a generic town.

There doesn't seem to be anything sinister about it. There isn't even any trash on the streets. He begins walking again, knowing that on the other side of town, beyond the middle intersection with the town's only light, there will be a one-story cheap motel, and that if Dean is anywhere in this town, that's where he'll be.

Sure enough, the motel is right there. Castiel almost smiles to himself when he spots a sign for pie at the diner he's passing. Before he can cross the street and go to Dean, though, a familiar silhouette flits on the edge of his sight. He turns just in time to see Sam disappearing around the corner of one of the houses.

"Sam," Castiel says, and then louder, "Sam!" He realizes he's moving. He realizes he's _running_ , and Sam comes back around the corner just in time for Castiel to slam into him. He puts his hands up to stop Castiel's momentum, and Castiel can't help it--- he's had a rough day--- he throws his arms around Sam and holds on the way his own brothers wouldn't hold on to him. Sam hugs him back.

"Cas," says Sam, so many things in his voice Castiel can't possibly read them all. He steps back to get a look at Sam's face, and that just makes the whole thing more confusing. Castiel knows, of course, of the myriad range of emotions human beings possess, and right now it looks like each emotion is taking a turn on Sam's face.

"Cas," Sam says again. Then, like he doesn't know what else to say, "How?"

Castiel can't decide how to answer. Finally he settles with, "I'm human, now. For good." The slideshow of emotions rolling across Sam's features slows, starts leaning more towards the soft negatives: sadness, pity, regret, compassion, understanding, affection. Castiel looks away.

"What room is Dean in?" Sam doesn't answer. Castiel gestures across the street. "At the motel. What room?" Castiel looks back at Sam. He wishes he hadn't. This is one emotion he knows all too well.

Sam is a picture of perfect, unending grief.

"Cas," Sam says again, choked, "Cas, I--- Look, I _tried_ , man, you have to know that I tried. I couldn't--- we--- There was just no way, and now---"

The sun is too bright. This human body is weak, and apparently gravity is stronger than Castiel had realized. He doesn't move, though.

Sam looks away. His head is down. Why is his head down? His hair is over his face; Dean is always teasing him about his hair. Dean always says---

Said. Dean always _said_.

Cas says, "I don't understand."

Sam says.

Sam says, "He saved me, Cas. He saved us all. It's completely over. Nothing bad will ever happen again. It's all been undone."

Sam says, "People are happy, now. People are safe."

Sam says, "It was his decision. I tried to stop him, but he saved me anyway."

Sam says, "The one and only person who can't be saved, the one and only thing that can't be undone, is," and then Sam doesn't say anything else.

Cas doesn't need to ask.

There's a woman inside the house they're standing next to. She's pretty, and tall with blonde hair. Castiel knows he's never seen her, but she looks familiar, like someone else dreamed of her and then told him about it. He can't take his eyes off her. He can't look anywhere else. She looks happy.

A voice beside him that sounds like Sam says, "We buried him beneath the willows. That way."

Castiel doesn't look to see which direction Sam is pointing, but he walks away all the same.

He walks for a long time. It feels like falling. The sunlight is warm upon his back. There's a grove of willows outside town, on the left of the road. Castiel wanders around beneath them for what feels like a long, long time before he sees it.

There's a marble headstone, gray flecked with black, with letters carved in gold.

Castiel drops to his knees.

He wants to reach out and run his fingers along Dean's name. He wants to reach out and run his fingers along _Dean_ , but he can't. He wants to cry, but he thinks he might be already and it isn't helping. He wants to--- he wants---

It isn't fair. It isn't right. Of all the people on Earth, all the ones who had ever lived or would ever live--- it shouldn't have been Dean. _It shouldn't have been Dean_. Not Dean, not Castiel's Dean, not Dean with his beautiful smile and his inability to see the goodness in himself and his unswerving loyalty to just a few people and his ability to be _real_ , the only real thing in a world of insubstantiality and gray.

All things perish, all Earthly lives end, but Dean's shouldn't have ended like this. It wasn't supposed to be this way. He was so young. He was so unhappy, and he was supposed to have so many years of unlearning worthlessness and learning joy and Castiel was going to be there for all of it, no matter what form he took, but now he's human so he can't even storm the very gates of Heaven to find his Dean again, but this body is young and it's going to be so long before he can get to Heaven the human way, and Dean was like a song that was only half-sung and it wasn't supposed to end this way. . .

"Ave Maria," he hears himself saying as his fingers twist in his pant legs, his hands seeking anchor even as his soul seeks the comfort of a mother's touch. "Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus. . ."

He says the words over and over until he can't say the words anymore. He twists his fingers until he can't feel them anymore. He tries to close his eyes until he can't see the words in front of him anymore, but it doesn't work.

He's struck, suddenly, by the physical: he kneels on the grass and the dirt, and the grass and the dirt go down, and then there's concrete, and then wood, and then Dean.

Dean is there. Dean is right there.

He falls forwards until his palms are flat on the soil, his face parallel with Dean's. His eyes are still closed. He prays again, the prayer of his heart, the prayer of his soul, the most sincere prayer he's ever uttered.

"I loved you."  
  
His fingers dig into the grass like he can reach what lies below it. "I've always loved you. I love you still."

The sun seems brighter, softer, more golden still when he opens his eyes. There's a sweet liquid happiness in the air that cannot be contained. He reads the headstone. He doesn't want to, but he can't help it.

 

 _Dean Winchester  
_ _1979 - 2019_

_Beloved loyal son, brother, friend_

_Al to late, al to late  
Wanne the bere is ate a gate_

 

Ever since Castiel saw the perfect grief on Sam's face, he's felt every breath the way he feels every movement of a broken bone. Now, though, all he's aware of is the fact that he's not breathing.

The epitaph is wrong.

Dean's mother used to sing to him. _Hey Jude_ , by the Beatles. Only sometimes. There was another song that she started to sing later, though, nearer the time she died, whenever John was gone. A sad Irish song that Dean pretended he didn't know the words to but that he would sometimes hum to himself. Sam didn't know about it. _No one_ knew about it except Castiel. He'd found a recording of it once, and offered it to Dean, but Dean had looked at it for a moment before making fun of the sissy music and jamming a Led Zeppelin tape into the Impala's tape deck so hard it'd nearly broke. Castiel had attempted a human gesture of comfort (a hand on the shoulder, removed after several seconds) and had never mentioned it again. Neither of them had. Castiel memorized the tune and the words anyway, though.

Dean wouldn't have picked something like this. If Dean had left instructions for his own tombstone it would read "So it goes." If Sam had picked it, it would probably say "Now your life's no longer empty, for surely Heaven waits for you." Personally, Castiel thinks Dean's gravestone should have the same words as Billy Pilgrim's. But that isn't the point. His mind is going in circles. One time Dean made him stare at the back of a cereal box until his eyes suddenly snapped in a way he didn't understand and the strange-looking square of the same picture over and over again became a rabbit. That's what it feels like now, only---

No one who had ever met Dean Winchester (least of all Dean Winchester himself) would try to sum him up with a verse from an Old English poem about death, and now that Castiel looks more closely--- looks at the gravestone simply as a block of carved marble, rather than a marker of the death of the man he loves and lost--- he can see that the words don't fit. They're there but they're not; like they've been physically superimposed over whatever was there before. He traces one finger over "late" and feels a jolt up his arm, a jolt that feels suspiciously like---- Gabriel.

Oh.

_Oh._

Gabriel the trickster god who sometimes tried to show people what he thought they needed to see, and Castiel had thought that his brothers loved him but then they cast him out, and Sam is sad that Dean is dead but not nearly sad enough, and he's living in a beautiful little house with Jess, because now that Castiel thinks her name he realizes that the woman in the house is _exactly_ how he always pictured Sam's dead love, and there's a motel across the street from a diner with a huge sign for pie and there's no trash in the streets and there's nothing sinister and Dean saved everyone and all the people in all the world are safe and happy and Dean is the only one who didn't deserve to be saved and surely Castiel has been here for hours and hours but the sun is still in exactly the same place and the light is still that honey glow that only happens once in a while on lovely summer afternoons and when Castiel said "I loved you" the sunshine itself felt inexplicably _happy_ and

Dean Winchester is dead. All the angels in Heaven cast out Castiel. Castiel is human. But Castiel is not on Earth.

Castiel is in Dean's Heaven.

A second later he's laughing, choking with it, because Dean is an idiot and Castiel cannot help but love him more because _only_ Dean would envision Heaven as a place where he's _still dead_.

He falls to his side, and eventually manages to roll over so he's lying stretched out on Dean's grave, staring at the blue, blue sky through the willow leaves. It takes him a second, but he realizes the sky is _exactly_ the same color as his own eyes.

"Dean," he starts, and then he has to stop, because the human form is weak and the angelic form is strong, but even in his angelic form with all the Grace he's ever had, Castiel would not be able to contain the joy and sorrow and boundless love he feels at that moment. He closes his eyes and twists his fingers in the grass beside him, the grass growing over the grave that Dean has built for himself in his own corner of Heaven; the grave that lies beneath an eternal blue sky that looks like Castiel.

This time he doesn't say an Ave; instead he hums the song Dean's mother used to sing to him. He doesn't say the words because they are too close. He doesn't open his eyes. When he's gone through it twice and trusts himself again to speak he says, his voice more rough than he's ever heard it, "Dean. I'm here now. All the forces of Heaven have sent me to your side. I--- I love you. I will always love you. Come back to me. Come and find me, and we can rest peaceful together."

There's no answer as such, and Castiel settles himself in for a long wait, but he doesn't mind. Teaching Dean that he's worth something and that Castiel will always want to be near him is what he'd planned on doing with his eternity anyway.

But the sunshine feels warmer on his face, and the wind blowing through the willow leaves could almost be laughter, and Castiel understands, now, knows the rhythm and rhyme of Dean's Heaven, so he knows like a promise that Dean _hears_.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
